Forrester v. White’s Empirical Analysis
1988
Citation profile
871 federal appellate · 421 district · 495 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 2,977 later decisions (46 by the Supreme Court) — most recently August 2025 · most notably Will v. Michigan Department of State Police (1989), Hafer v. Melo (1991)
871 federal appellate · 421 district · 495 state decisions — followed in 45 states
Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.
Appellate journey
reviewedForrester v. White (from Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Relies on Harlow v. Fitzgerald · Scheuer v. Rhodes · Mitchell v. Forsyth · Imbler v. Pachtman · Pierson v. Ray
Cited together with Imbler v. Pachtman · Harlow v. Fitzgerald · Stump v. Sparkman · Butz v. Economou · Burns v. Reed
Most-quoted passages
The sentences later courts lift from this opinion, ranked by how many decisions quote each — the parts of the opinion doing the work. These counts are smaller than the citation total above because most of the 2,977 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“intimately associated with the judicial phase of the criminal process.”
107 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“the nature of the function performed, not the identity of the actor who performed it.”
53 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence“we examine the nature of the functions with which a particular official or class of officials has been lawfully entrusted, and we seek to evaluate the effect that exposure to particular forms of liability would likely have on the appropriate exercise of those functions.”
39 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Duncan v. Peck · Hardage v. Jacobs
How this case has been treated — in progress
Whether each later court followed, distinguished, criticized, or overruled this decision. The treatment classification (task #35) runs highest-cited cases first and lights up here as it reaches this one.